Many different types of communication networks are currently known, such as fixed telephony networks, mobile telephony networks, wired and wireless broadband networks, and Internet Protocol (IP) Television (TV) networks, for example. These networks typically employ their own methods for managing network sessions, for identifying users who create such network sessions, and for identifying users who access network services.
These is no generic way for an application to discover what sessions are currently in progress and which users are participating in those sessions. An application that needs to know the status of a given network session or of a given network user must use methods which are specific to the network. Furthermore, such network specific methodologies make it difficult to share information across network boundaries.
Thus, for complex applications which need to manage multiple network sessions spanning multiple networks, with multiple network users involved in each session, it is difficult to obtain accurate information in a uniform way regarding the status of such network sessions and the status of the network users involved in those sessions.
Existing approaches to address such problems require the application to have detailed knowledge of how sessions are managed within each network and require the application to interact with the appropriate session management element. An application is then required to deduce the information regarding session and user status from callbacks that are invoked by the session management element